Bringing down waiting lists from historic highs - why learning lessons from the past could help

NHS waiting lists for elective care are at record highs. And there has been no sign in recent years of anything being done to resolve this.

Covid and industrial action are too easily blamed, but waiting lists were on the rise even before the pandemic and strikes.

There has become almost an acceptance that nothing can be done. Small falls in the waiting list have been celebrated, only for these numbers to rise again next month.

But a new white paper we've produced shows clearly it doesn't need to be that way. There is an opportunity for change. There is a route by which waiting lists could be reduced rapidly and, just as importantly, sustainably.

The report, entitled "Reducing NHS waiting lists from historic highs - the political policies that led to the current state and how to solve it", found that waiting lists have been cut significantly in a relatively small space of time before. Between August 2007 (when referral-to-treatment targets were first introduced) and August 2008, the then-Labour government brought waiting lists down from 4.2m to 2.7m.

What's more, waiting list sizes remained relatively consistent over the next seven years, staying between 2.3m to 3.1m. And over 90% of people were waiting under the 18-week target throughout the period of January 2012 to November 2015.

So, it's been done before - why not again?

Obviously, the challenges are different and the waiting list is a lot higher now than it was then. But we know something similar can be done.

Would Labour's plans do the job?

In the white paper, we analysed the pledges of the two main political parties in relation to waiting lists. Only Labour had a number - 40,000 new appointments a week - which we could evaluate against.

Our findings revealed that a 40,000 weekly uplift, if delivered consistently and targeted at the right specialities, would be more than enough to meet the 18-week standard and bring waiting list numbers down quickly.

“However, the devil is in the detail,” Adam Ceney , our Head of Analytics, who co-authored the report, said. “So, whilst in our modelling the projections suggest Labour’s pledge would be achievable, there is still some detail lacking on how this would be done – and why people wait much longer in different areas of the country and in different specialties.”?

Karina Malhotra , Founder and Managing Director at Acumentice, added: "Our analysis shows that a rapid and sustainable drop can be achieved if we take lessons from the not-too-distant past, get the workforce on board and ensure any changes are designed to be long-term and sustainable so we don’t find ourselves in this position again.”

“It’s been done before, we’ve seen how waiting lists can be brought down in the work we’ve done with Trusts, so it can happen again,” she concluded.

You can read the full document here.